DISCLAIMER: I know I posted in another earlier blog from a couple years ago but just a short preface to say that I acknowledge 1) how self-indulgent blogging is and 2) that all of my blogs are "white-people-problem" blogs and I am a privileged young woman who barely earned any of it.
DAY 2: As soon as I began the writing process on day one I immediately felt the onset of impostor syndrome, an extremely useful label for a non-DSM neuroses. Impostor syndrome has been defined by the experts on wikipedia as the inability to internalise successes, therefore always feeling as if you're faking it all and tricking a lot of smart people. It is especially common in female graduate students. I've often described it as feeling like I'm the wizard in the Wizard of Oz and one day someone is just going to pull the curtain back and just find me...little me with no original and creative ideas, regurgitating information, being pedantic. As I delved into day one, the doubts about my ability to produce two doctoral-level papers and whether or not I was actually be able to complete these two papers sufficiently in 21 days. So I turned on the obsessive maniac side of myself to push through the habit and desire I have practiced over the last few years of never working evenings... finding the will through obsession to push through an intense, non-stop 10 hours of writing. The obsession with what I"m working on and to have it finished in 21 days is so great that I've managed to ignore the fact that I have a bag of Miss Vikis salt and vinegar chips in my cupboard and I've only eaten half of it in two days. This is not small victory for those of you who know me and understand my shove-miss-vikis-in-my-mouth-until-my-tongue-bleeds addiction. This is good. After my masters degree I feared I'd never be able to harness the kind of focus I once had for writing lengthy 'things'. I guess I can! This is hopeful!
However, shortly into day one, by 3 pm, after only 7 hours of writing, I noticed the beginnings of the degradation of my ability to make a decision. My friend and I discussed this idea last weekend as we talked about an article that had made the rounds on facebook about why successful people wear the same thing everyday. The theory is that we only have so much decision making capacity in a given day and minimising petty decisions, like your attire, helps the decision-making process from degrading as fast throughout the day. Over the weekend I also spent the entirety of my Saturday cooking all of my meals for the next 21 days because I know myself well enough to know that as soon as I'm feeling presssure to finsish something I will not take the time to cook but rather justify ordering Papa Johns from across the street costing me precious dollars and life-years. As my friend and I discussed this I realised that the underlying reason of why I chose to prepare meals for the next month in the first place was precisely so I didn't have to add deciding what to cook for dinner to my daily decision making. Anyway, I noticed the degradation of my decision-making when, after going for a quick brisk walk at 3 pm, I entered into my apartment and took my boots off. I picked them up to throw them in the closet and noticed I had dragged in some slush on the bottom of my boots. Now, I have this beautiful vintage hardwood floor to which I have already caused some extensive (and expensive) water damage in the past year. I have no door mats around the front door nor in the closet to absorb the slush from the boots. I held the boots in my hand and stared at the bottoms of them for at least 60 seconds as I was unable to decide what to do with them while they dried. I finally figured out a solution but had lost precious moments staring at my boots in my hand.
Lastly, I've already resorted to methods other than "Easy Now" sleepy time tea and yin yoga before bed to ensure I get a full sleep. As the excitement of writing my comprehensive exams have built up over the last few weeks I have been having some restless nights, falling asleep by 8:30 pm and waking up at 1:30 unable to return to sleep as sub-conscious stress simmered on the edge of my dreams. The night before Day 1 I did everything I could to ensure a naturally good night sleep but to no avail. I woke up at 1:30 am and finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Last night, however, I will simply say that I found my "soma" (reference to the 'anti-anxiety' susbtance used in "Brave New World") in my freezer, leftover from this past summer and had an AMAZING sleep. We'll leave it at that because there might be a chance, albeit slim, that I'll have a disgusting desire to go into politics one day.
MY FAVOURITE THING I WROTE TODAY (which may or may not make final cuts):
"Where they [the American National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the British Colombian school meal program for socioeconomically vulnerable children] differ substantially, however, is when it comes to the nationalistic underpinnings of the NSLP, both in terms of promoting domestic food commodity consumption and in terms of making sure children are healthy enough to potentially be drafted for military service. This was a key reason for the original enactment of the federal NSLP in 1946 and continues to be so today (cite too fat to fight) with politicians in recent years referring to the obesity epidemic as a “matter of national security” (Fed-up documentary). The US is often criticized for exploiting impoverished demographics by disproportionately recruiting soldiers from some of the poorest areas of the US. It's fitting, then, if these soon-to-be recruits are being fed their school lunches by the state during their formative years so they will at least pass the physical once duty calls."
DAY 2: As soon as I began the writing process on day one I immediately felt the onset of impostor syndrome, an extremely useful label for a non-DSM neuroses. Impostor syndrome has been defined by the experts on wikipedia as the inability to internalise successes, therefore always feeling as if you're faking it all and tricking a lot of smart people. It is especially common in female graduate students. I've often described it as feeling like I'm the wizard in the Wizard of Oz and one day someone is just going to pull the curtain back and just find me...little me with no original and creative ideas, regurgitating information, being pedantic. As I delved into day one, the doubts about my ability to produce two doctoral-level papers and whether or not I was actually be able to complete these two papers sufficiently in 21 days. So I turned on the obsessive maniac side of myself to push through the habit and desire I have practiced over the last few years of never working evenings... finding the will through obsession to push through an intense, non-stop 10 hours of writing. The obsession with what I"m working on and to have it finished in 21 days is so great that I've managed to ignore the fact that I have a bag of Miss Vikis salt and vinegar chips in my cupboard and I've only eaten half of it in two days. This is not small victory for those of you who know me and understand my shove-miss-vikis-in-my-mouth-until-my-tongue-bleeds addiction. This is good. After my masters degree I feared I'd never be able to harness the kind of focus I once had for writing lengthy 'things'. I guess I can! This is hopeful!
However, shortly into day one, by 3 pm, after only 7 hours of writing, I noticed the beginnings of the degradation of my ability to make a decision. My friend and I discussed this idea last weekend as we talked about an article that had made the rounds on facebook about why successful people wear the same thing everyday. The theory is that we only have so much decision making capacity in a given day and minimising petty decisions, like your attire, helps the decision-making process from degrading as fast throughout the day. Over the weekend I also spent the entirety of my Saturday cooking all of my meals for the next 21 days because I know myself well enough to know that as soon as I'm feeling presssure to finsish something I will not take the time to cook but rather justify ordering Papa Johns from across the street costing me precious dollars and life-years. As my friend and I discussed this I realised that the underlying reason of why I chose to prepare meals for the next month in the first place was precisely so I didn't have to add deciding what to cook for dinner to my daily decision making. Anyway, I noticed the degradation of my decision-making when, after going for a quick brisk walk at 3 pm, I entered into my apartment and took my boots off. I picked them up to throw them in the closet and noticed I had dragged in some slush on the bottom of my boots. Now, I have this beautiful vintage hardwood floor to which I have already caused some extensive (and expensive) water damage in the past year. I have no door mats around the front door nor in the closet to absorb the slush from the boots. I held the boots in my hand and stared at the bottoms of them for at least 60 seconds as I was unable to decide what to do with them while they dried. I finally figured out a solution but had lost precious moments staring at my boots in my hand.
Lastly, I've already resorted to methods other than "Easy Now" sleepy time tea and yin yoga before bed to ensure I get a full sleep. As the excitement of writing my comprehensive exams have built up over the last few weeks I have been having some restless nights, falling asleep by 8:30 pm and waking up at 1:30 unable to return to sleep as sub-conscious stress simmered on the edge of my dreams. The night before Day 1 I did everything I could to ensure a naturally good night sleep but to no avail. I woke up at 1:30 am and finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Last night, however, I will simply say that I found my "soma" (reference to the 'anti-anxiety' susbtance used in "Brave New World") in my freezer, leftover from this past summer and had an AMAZING sleep. We'll leave it at that because there might be a chance, albeit slim, that I'll have a disgusting desire to go into politics one day.
MY FAVOURITE THING I WROTE TODAY (which may or may not make final cuts):
"Where they [the American National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the British Colombian school meal program for socioeconomically vulnerable children] differ substantially, however, is when it comes to the nationalistic underpinnings of the NSLP, both in terms of promoting domestic food commodity consumption and in terms of making sure children are healthy enough to potentially be drafted for military service. This was a key reason for the original enactment of the federal NSLP in 1946 and continues to be so today (cite too fat to fight) with politicians in recent years referring to the obesity epidemic as a “matter of national security” (Fed-up documentary). The US is often criticized for exploiting impoverished demographics by disproportionately recruiting soldiers from some of the poorest areas of the US. It's fitting, then, if these soon-to-be recruits are being fed their school lunches by the state during their formative years so they will at least pass the physical once duty calls."
I am glad you are blogging again! It is a fun insight into your life! You really are an excellent writer, you are no impostor! Love you, see you SOON!
ReplyDeleteThanks KN!! See you sooooon! xo
ReplyDelete